Batman/Elmer Fudd Special #1 was written by Tom King (The Vision, The Sheriff of Babylon) with cover and interior art by Lee Weeks (Daredevil) while color was provided by Lovern Kindzierski (Marvel) and lettering by Deron Bennett (DC, Vault).

This unique crossover is part of a six issue DC Universe / Looney Tunes One-Shot collection. In addition to the Batman Fudd combo, the list of other comics includes: Legion of Super-Heroes/Bugs Bunny Special #1 written by Sam Humphries with art by Tom Grummett and Scott Hanna (June 14, 2017); Martian Manhunter/Marvin the Martian Special #1 written by Steve Orlando and Frank Barberi with art by Aaron Lopresti (June 14, 2017); Lobo/Road Runner Special #1 written by Bill Morrison with art by Kelley Jones (June 21, 2017); Wonder Woman/Tazmanian Devil Special #1 written by Tony Bedard with art by Barry Kitson (June 21, 2017); Jonah Hex/Yosemite Sam Special #1 written by Jimmy Palmiotti with art by Mark Texeira (June 28, 2017). Though these are billed as “one-shot” issues which are typical stand-alone stories, we can only hope/assume that DC Comics has left the window open for many more installments down the line seeing that they chose to include ”#1” in the title designations on their website. Just sayin’.

(4) POD PEOPLE. Fandompodden interviewed current and future Worldcon organizers for its first podcast in English. (They’re usually in Swedish.)

This is our very first English speaking podcast aiming new and old international fandom friends. We have three amazing interviews from the recent Worldcon 75 in Helsinki. Jukka Halme, supreme overlord of the finnish Worldcon. Dave Clark of the San Jose organisation and finaly Steve Cooper and Emmy England of Dublin 2019. Your host for the show is Håkan Wester and Patrick Edlund. Enjoy

“Nowadays, there’s so many private ventures that when I wrote the War Dogs series, I made the private ventures face forward, and called the Martian colonists Muskies, as a tribute to Elon’s dreams, if not to what the reality is going to be,” he said.

Seattle is a hotbed of science fiction thinking in all these corporations.

As a “hard” science fiction writer who does extensive research, Bear has dived into everything from nanotechnology (his 1983 novel Blood Music is credited by some as being its first use in science fiction) to planetary science. A current fascination, in part because it’s a key setting in the War Dogs trilogy, is Titan. “It’s got a hazy orange layer,” he explained. “It’s full of plastics, and waxes, and organic chemistry. Then, it turns out, it’s actually got a water ocean underneath.”

Access the podcast directly here. (parts of it will also air on KIRO-FM Seattle, as well as be available for streaming).

Some of the top films, TV shows and books today are what was once called “genre fiction,” like sci-fi and fantasy. So is it a golden age for the geeky arts? Or is this mainstream-ization of geek culture more ominous? We explore that question with renowned sci-fi author Gret Bear in the first episode of our special pop-culture podcast series, hosted by Frank Catalano.

Catalano says, “Upcoming episodes will include interviewing SFWA President Cat Rambo about the relevance of awards in science fiction and fantasy and the role of diversity, and curators at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) about the challenges in preserving science fiction and fantasy artifacts from film and TV that were never designed to last. More episodes to come after that, probably at the rate of one or two a month (as my day job allows).”

(7) MORE ON ALDISS. Christopher Priest writes a remembrance of Brian Aldiss on his blog that’s much more personal than the literary obit he wrote for The Guardian: “Here it began, here it ends”.

In fact, I was too hard up and too shy to go the SF convention, and did not meet Brian Aldiss in person until about 1965. Then, when he found out my name, he said, ‘I remember you — you wrote me that intelligent letter! Come and have a drink!’ It was the first moment of a friendship that was to last, with the usual ups and downs of any friendship between two difficult men, for more than half a century.

This is a photograph taken in June 1970, by Margaret, Brian Aldiss’s second wife. Brian had generously invited me down to their house in Oxfordshire to celebrate the publication of my first novel Indoctrinaire. Also there was Charles Monteith, who was not only my editor at the publishers Faber & Faber, he was Brian’s too. He had been responsible for buying and publishing all the early Aldiss books, including those short stories I had admired so much, and the fabulous bravura of Non-Stop.

Most people don’t remember anymore, but rock legend Jimi Hendrix was a science fiction book junkie. We caught up with one the guitarist’s biographers to find out more about his science fiction bookshelf.

In the new book, Becoming Jimi Hendrix: From Southern Crossroads to Psychedelic London, the Untold Story of a Musical Genius, authors Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber take a deeper look at the guitarist…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

Ray Bradbury’s 88th birthday cake

Born August 22, 1920 – Ray Bradbury

Born August 22, 1978 – Late-night talk show host James Cordon, who also was in some episodes of Doctor Who.

(10) BIRTHDAY GIFT APPEAL. Money is being raised to preserve books and other items donated to IUPUI by Ray Bradbury.

His collection of books, literary works, artifacts, correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and so much more is housed at IUPUI in the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies. The Center is led by Professor Jon Eller, a personal friend of Bradbury’s for over 23 years and noted scholar of the author’s works.

Without Bradbury, the world wouldn’t be the same. Preserving these assets will help ensure that generations of fans, scholars, authors, filmmakers, and historians are able to pay tribute to the October Man.

Help us preserve the books of the man who knew what society would be without them.

Your generous gift to this campaign will provide general support to the Center and assist in the preservation of the vast collection. DONATE NOW and help us reach our $5000 goal.

(11) FAMILY TREE. And Bradbury’s family tree includes a Salem woman convicted as a witch. There’s some kind of lesson to be learned about the genetics of sf writers here – if I only knew what it was.

One of my great uncles was the greatest Shakespearian actor of his era. And his brother shot Lincoln, so there's that. https://t.co/zlM5WlxEy7

As noted, The Hike is a fast-moving work, despite coming in at just under 400 pages. I read it in a single sitting of just a few hours. Magary keeps things moving apace, save for a few sections that carry on perhaps a little too long. His fluid prose carries the reader along smoothly and easily even if they won’t find themselves lingering over it for its lyricism or startling nature. The humor is another reason it goes down so easily, most of it coming from that crab, who is, well, kinda crabby. The crab is given a run for its comic money, though, by Fermona the giant, who runs a kind of Thunder Dome Buffet for herself. The book isn’t all lightness and humor, however. Magary’s portrait of Ben’s suburban family life is a bit thin, but does strike some emotional chords in scenes where Ben is with or thinking of his children.

(15) VAMPIRE HUNTER. Next year the Stephen Haffner press will bring out The Vampire Stories of Robert Bloch. Right now, Stephen is crowdsourcing help in tracking down the original artwork for his cover.

Robert Bloch (1917-1994) is one of the most fondly remembered and collected authors of crime, horror, fantasy, and science fiction of the 20th Century. Noted by many as the author of Psycho, Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over 30 novels. He was a member of the Lovecraft Circle and began his career by emulating H.P. Lovecraft’s brand of “cosmic horror.” He later specialized in crime and horror stories dealing with a more psychological approach.

While we have secured permission from the rights-handlers for Gahan Wilson‘s artwork for the cover image, we have been unable to locate the original “Parkbench Vampire” painting.

The image originally appeared on the cover of the humor digest, FOR LAUGHING OUT LOUD #33 (Dell Magazines, October, 1964) promising a “Hilarious Monster Issue!”.

As shown above and to the right, someone—somewhere—had access to the original artwork and placed a low-res image on the internet.

We have sent queries to several Gahan Wilson-collectors as well as many collectors of SF-art-in-general asking for the whereabouts of the original artwork, but nothing has surfaced yet.

So, if you, or someone you know, has a lead on where the original artwork resides, or can assist in supplying a high-resolution scan of the painting, please contact us ASAP at info@haffnerpress.com.

The Silent Shield, the fifth main book in Jeff Wheeler’s Kingfountain series, is proof positive that creative consistency makes for a good read. I feel like a bit of a broken record at this point, but Wheeler has once again crafted a short, engaging novel that manages to not only advance the overall narrative but succeeds in expanding the thematic scope of the series. The Silent Shield marks a new high point in a story that has been consistently excellent, and proves once again that one can craft a mature, emotionally resonant and accessible tale without relying upon the grim, the dark or the explicit.

The Berlin Project tells the story of Karl Cohen, an actual scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project and father-in-law to the author. In our timeline, he devised a way of using centrifuges to make weapons grade uranium for a nuclear bomb. Now in our timeline, this method was rejected in favor of a gaseous diffusion method which cost billions and delayed the project significantly while the engineering problems were worked out. Benford proposes, however, that Karl is more assertive and has a little luck early on by getting private investors on board who hope to use nuclear power for civilians in the future. Thus a nuclear bomb is built a year earlier in time for the Normandy invasion. As the title suggests, the target for America’s first nuclear strike is Berlin, but the city’s destruction doesn’t necessarily give the Allies the outcome they were hoping for….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Kevin J. Maroney, Frank Catalano, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, and Michael J. Walsh for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]

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On my Mom’s side, my ancestors are a lot of small-time craftsmen and the trail eventually leads back to the Alsace region which has been disputed between Germany and France for centuries. My great-grandfather was a roving shoemaker, who traveled from Alsace via Bremen all the way to New Jersey, opening shoemaker shops and fathering kids wherever he went. His trail is lost in the late 1930s, when he promised he’d come back to Germany for his daughter’s wedding, but never arrived. The prevailing theory (disproven by now) was that he died in a shipwreck. Current theory is that he either broke his promise and stayed in New Jersey (I hope so) or that he was arrested and possibly killed by the Nazis upon return (he’d apparently been active in the labour movement and his mother, my great-great-grandmother, had a name that sounded Jewish to the Nazis).

On my Dad’s side, there’s a whole lot of sea captains, including one who brought back an inuit wife from his travels, and Lutheran priests. Earlier this year, I visited the church where one of my ancestors was the parish priest sometime in the 18th century. He’d gone there after having been banished from the town where the family lived before for disorderly conduct.

No celebrities, as far as I know. But in Germany, you usually can’t trace your ancestry back further than the 1600s anyway, because the 30-Years-War destroyed most documents.

My grandmother did a fair amount of delving into my family’s history, and it turned out that it was intertwined with the family of a reasonably wealthy man who had invested a lot of resources into genealogical research, which was kind of an interesting twist.

As far as we know, we are not related to anyone famous. We know for certain that we are unconnected to Ezra Pound, which no one laments. On the other hand, there is nothing linking my family to Dean Roscoe Pound either, which I have always thought to be kind of disappointing.

My mom was the illegitimate daughter of a Colombian senator, and my paternal grandmother boasted of being descended from the Soloveitchik rabbinical dynasty (unsure how). Nothing else of any consequence.

my family tree includes a great uncle who, ummm, “worked with” Meyer Lansky.

The other family claim to fame, which my father extensively researched before his death (even unto visiting formerly desecrated graveyards in Poland) was that we were descended from the Vilna Gaon (one of the foremost rabbinical scholars of the 18th century).
All that research led to a connection – to one of his secretaries (a rabbi in his own right, but not THE rabbi).

Oh, not to mention that I am also, of course, a direct descendant of the first ever people to be Homo Sapiens Sapiens, denisovan and neanderthal genes included!

@ Charon D & Techgrrl1972: Me too, in a state that has still not opened up their adoption records (NY). Apocryphal info suggests unwed (young) teen mom and “traveling salesman” type father stationed at an AF base (now since closed).

Have tried all registries and reunion sites…no joy. Don’t want to send DNA so someone can sell it commercially and make money, while also not providing me with a right to control such data, so search is at an impasse.

Techgrrl1972 – the “chosen baby” line was used on me too – its from a book of the same title if you’ve not seen that.

Desire to find out background is intermittent, but strong when present.

I was once told that my family is descended from Oliver Cromwell’s sister, on my mother’s side, but I have no idea if that’s actually true. I like to think that if it is he’d be rolling in his grave at my mother marrying into a family with Irish Catholic heritage; serves him right. Otherwise it’s mostly fairly ordinary – one of my great-grandmother’s was one of the first English women to train as a pharmacist, and my maternal grandfather was, at time of qualification, the youngest man to qualify as an actuary. Charles Keene, an illustrator for Punch, was a cousin, and Clive Francis (actor of stage and screen) is a cousin. Another cousin died on the Burma Railway without ever meeting his infant child. One of my great-grandfather’s died as a result of rationing – apparently he would only eat the best of what was available, of which there was very little. At one point my maternal ancestors ran a French bookshop. My grandfather (on my father’s side) did much of the electrical engineering for Abbey Road (and snuck my father into numerous recording sessions). Nothing very unusual.

We know more about my maternal family than my paternal one – different economic circumstances, mostly, so things weren’t recorded as much, and also there was a single mother not so very far back (she’s who my surname descends from) and we haven’t the slightest clue who the man involved was.